This search page offers in addition the possibility of searching for subjects, from our list of 340 subject classifiers. You can also search more accurately for the people, the publications (either periodicals or books), and the institutions, societies, etc. mentioned in the periodical articles, by choosing search terms from predefined lists.

This rather daunting search page provides additional options, allowing for highly sophisticated searches. You can search for different genres of articles, selecting terms from our list of sixty-five genre classifiers. Articles by particular authors or illustrators can be located by choosing names from predefined lists. It is also possible to search for articles by authors of a specified gender, or who were born or died within particular periods. Author signatures and article titles can also be subjected to keyword searches. You can specify that you are only interested in articles in which a publication is reviewed or extracted, rather than merely being mentioned. Finally, articles can be identified that are illustrated with a particular kind of illustration - say a woodcut or a lithograph.

All the people, books, periodicals, unidentified pseudonyms, and institutions, societies, etc. that appear in the index have unique entries in the associated registers. These will generally be accessed through the browse interface. However, you may wish to search the registers because a particular item cannot be located in browse view and you want to be sure that you have not missed it accidentally. Alternatively, you might search the registers in order to locate specific kinds of entries: for example, you may wish to identify books whose titles include a specific word or topic, or you may wish to identify institutions devoted to a particular subject.

This will search for a word, or part of a word, or a combination of words anywhere in the index.

N.B. You cannot necessarily expect to find all relevant references to books by entering the book title at this point. For example, entering "vestiges of the natural history of creation" will only result in one hit, whereas the index contains ten references to this anonymous evolutionary work.

Keyword Searching Every search field which requires Keyword(s) can be used to enter multiple search terms. By default, the search engine will return entries which contain any of the words included in the field. You can force the search engine to return only entries where all the words are present using the addition sign (+).

'medicine government' will return entries where either the words 'medicine' or 'government' are present

'+medicine +government' will return entries where both the words 'medicine' and 'government' are present

Phrase Searching Every search field which requires Keyword(s) can also be used to find phrases, using quotes (").

Excluding words Every search field which requires Keyword(s) can also be used to specify some words to exclude from the search, using a subtraction symbol (-).

medicine -narcotics will return entries which contain the word 'medicine' and which do not also contain the word 'narcotics'.

Wild Cards Every search field which requires Keyword(s) can also use a limited wild card function, using the asterisk (*). The asterisk stands for zero or more letters and can only be used at the end of a word.